The Church of Winchester
by poestheblackcat
Summary: Many, many years into the future, two brothers learn about their namesakes, the legendary Brothers Winchester. About as far into the future a future!fic can be.


Summary: Many, many years into the future, two brothers learn about their namesakes, the legendary Brothers Winchester. About as far into the future a future!fic can be.

AN: I've never written anything this sci-fi…ever. I've done some _Dark Angel_ stories, but they're not really sci-fi. This is. And also, I have this fascination with the Gospel of Winchester and it being a "real" religious text. I love the idea and I wanted to do a "what if" thing. So here goes…

Thanks to DamaDeHonor for looking this over for me and making suggestions to make it better.

**The Church of Winchester**

Sa'mo and Dain walked westward, their steps lighting up the holowalk with each tread, heading for the other side of the settlement where their homeship hovered a couple miles over the planet. Earth was just setting on the horizon.

Dain held on to his younger brother's hand tightly. He shuddered as he remembered the one time he'd let go at the store. It was the first time they'd ever been in one—their family usually just ordered everything from i-Mart.

Dain had let go in his awe at the sight before him. Sa'mo had easily slipped out of the loosened grip and disappeared. He'd been lost for only five minutes but it felt like five Earth-years to Dain. It was a long time.

Dad had been so mad. 'It's your responsibility to look after your brother, Dain,' he'd said. Dad had been in the Astro-Corps in his younger days. He ran the small one-family homeship like he was still captain of his battleship, even though he was now an antiques shop owner.

He was right, though. Looking after Sammy was Dain's job. And he'd screwed up.

Sam tugged on Dain's hand. "Dain? You think we're like them?" the little boy asked, baby fat still rounding out his cheeks.

Dain looked down at the big brown eyes fringed by long bangs. "Who?"

"Sam and Dean," the younger boy answered, matter-of-factly.

They'd just learned about them in Thursday-school. The boys were walking home from their once-a-week religion class. Their mother insisted they needed to learn about the spiritual side of life, so every Thursday, off they went to the small church located on the planet's ground-level.

Dain, though he loathed the actual lessons, thought the building itself looked kind of snazz, with its dark, shiny outside and its cool leather-covered inside. Real leather was hard to get a hold of nowadays, especially up where Dain and his family lived. It originally came from the skin of cows, specially treated in some bizarre and ancient custom to form a shiny sort of thick cloth. Dain thought killing animals just to make cloth was kind of pointless—it had led to those very same cows going extinct, hadn't it? Why have live animals when you could just make the parts you need in the lab? People back then. Really.

Anyway, it was said that the blueprint of the Church of Winchester was based off of an enlarged version of the design of an Impala, a kind of a car. A car, Dain knew from learning about them in history at school—hey, he did pay attention when the subject was interesting, contrary to popular opinion—was like a Whizzer, only with wheels on the bottom of it so it could move around on the ground. Anti-gravity technology hadn't been invented yet.

At any rate, Dain's response to Sa'mo's question was, "Maybe. We _are_ named after them, you know? And I'm older, like Dean, and you're the younger one just like Sam, so I guess we are like them a little."

"I think they were snazz," Dain's Sam said. "Don't you think they were snazz, Dain?" He turned his small face up to his big brother's, eager for his hero's opinion on the matter. Only the coolest of the most awesome things were called 'snazz.' Snazzy things were, well, snazz.

"Sure, they were snazz. At least Dean was, because he was the older one," Dain smirked. "Sam was kind of a pill. Kind of like someone I know," he teased, giving his little brother a tiny shove off the holowalk.

The insult, meaning soft like a pillow, made Sammy scowl. "I am not a pill. You're a pill."

Dain rolled his eyes. "No, I am not a pill. Only little brothers can be pills," he said. Sammy's pout almost had him chuckling at the sight.

"Nu-uh," the little boy said, "Says who?"

"All big brothers," Dain answered lightly. "And big brothers are always right."

Sammy wrenched his hand free from his mean big brother's grip and stalked off for the next few steps, still keeping within Dain's view. The holowalk lit up a few blocks ahead of him. Suddenly, the holowalk light flickered all down the street and a shadow whooshed right past the younger boy, causing him to whimper and scamper back in fright to the safety of Dain's presence.

"Pill," chuckled Dain. "What are you scared of?"

Sammy's lower lip trembled. "It was a monster. Like in the stories from Earth." He looked back at where the shadow had seemed to have gone, sniffling a little.

"Jebeezus, Sammy. How many times I gotta tell you monsters aren't real? They're just stories," Dain said, his actions more tender than the harsh words. He held his little brother close, the small arms clinging tight around his waist.

"But Sam and Dean fought them. The GOW said," Sammy retorted into Dain's shirt.

"Yeah," Dain sighed, "But the Gospel of Winchester also said that they fought the Big Bad and made sure each and every one of the monsters and evil things were all dead. There aren't any more of them now. Didn't you pay attention in class?" he teased. "And I thought you were the geek."

Sammy loosened his hold a little. Just a teensy little bit. "So there really aren't any monsters?"

Dain's face showed no trace of fear, no hint of anything other than complete honesty as he answered. "Nah," he said. "There aren't. Now come on. We have to get home soon or Dad'll laser-eye me."

Sa'mo transferred his grip to Dain's hand. "Okay."

"Okay." Dain led the way home. However, his gaze lingered on the dark shadow noiselessly watching the brothers cross the holowalk from its place hidden under the parked Whizzers lining the street.

He'd tell Dad about it later on after Sa'mo was asleep, and they'd come back and kill the sucker. Dad had just that year allowed him to join the real family business: saving people, hunting things. Sammy wasn't ready to know about the monsters yet though. Dain would keep him in the light for a while yet. It was his job.

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AN: So who wants to join the Church of Winchester? Meetings are at 9:00 on Thursday nights. Needless to say, I belong to it and am now a missionary adding new members to our growing congregation. ;D


End file.
